Bubba Pollard scores pole for Southern Super Series World Crown 300

JEFFERSON, Ga. -- Bubba Pollard captured the pole for the 30th World Crown 300 on Saturday night, pacing the Southern Super Series field with a best time of 16.392 seconds around the half-mile Gresham Motorsports Park.

The race is considered one of the top-three events on the Super Series schedule and the pole is one of the more sought after prizes in the Super Late Model discipline. More importantly, Pollard believes that having track position early in the race and the first pit stall are the keys to winning on Saturday night.

“Track position matters here because it’s so darn hard to pass,” Pollard told SB Nation. “The biggest thing is having that number one stall because they are not letting us choose and you have to pit where you qualify.

“The top-10 cars are going to be stuck there all together and they’ll be both behind and in front of you -- but we’ll have the benefit of having no one in front of us to block. That’s huge.”

A two-hour rain delay had washed the track of grip and rubber but Pollard said it didn’t feel any different than usual conditions when he turned his two laps in time trials.

“When you have good asphalt like this, it’s in people’s head,” Pollard said. “We’re not racing NASCAR. It stayed the same. I don’t know, it freed up, it was free in qualifying and we had freed it up from practice so really to me, it wasn’t a big change.”

Pollard is the winnigest Super Late Model driver since 2011 but his hometown World Crown 300 is one of the glaring voids in his trophy collection. He finished second in last year’s race to Chase Elliott, completing an all Georgia podium that also included NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver David Ragan.

Pollard is looking to move up that last spot by the end of Saturday night.

“We’ve struggled at times this year and we’re looking to eliminate mistakes and move forward. We had to go a little past our budget with some wrecks and bad luck that has happened. So being a family operation, winning a race like this would be huge.”

TJ Reaid, Preston Peltier, Chad Finley and Augie Grill completed the top-five in qualifying. Grill is competing in his first Southern Super Series race since his disqualification at Pensacola in June.

[READ MORE: World Crown 300 to feature live pit stops.]

The World Crown 300 pays $20,000 to the winner. The complete qualifying results can be found below. Race updates can be found on Twitter @MattWeaverSBN.

[READ MORE: Daniel Hemric leads championship standings]